Nonprofit Social Media Strategy Map Workshop In Silicon Valley

Compasspoint

View more presentations from Beth Kanter.

Last November, I had the pleasure of leading a workshop for a 100 Silicon Valley nonprofit organizations in hosted by Compasspoint and generously supported by the David and Lucile Packard Foundation. The workshop was filled within 24 hours and there was a waiting list. So, we scheduled an encore today for 65 people on the waiting list.

This workshop is mostly small group work and this time I experimented with smaller sized groups - 6 participants versus 8-10.  It worked much better.

I tend to do a lot of "share pairs" where people get a chance to do a debrief with someone else in the room.  It helps people process what they are learning.   My biggest problem as a facilitator was transitioning from the share pair back to full group. I had been using chimes.  But even with the loud noise they made, it did not get everyone's attention.

Nelson Layag, who designs and delivers a lot of nonprofit trainings as part of his job at Compasspoint, shared a secret killer tip with me.   He suggested that you tell people at the beginning that if the group sees you raise your hand, to raise your hand.  This sweeps through the room - and gets people attention.  And it worked!

Another process piece that I experimented with to ask the group to do active listenings to the report outs from the game and identify good ideas they might adapt.  This idea came from Shiree Teng who I will have the honor of working with on an extended group training.

The major content theme was not "How do we find the time?," but a more subtle variation.  How do integrate social media into someone's job?  How do we manage it?

Here are some ideas:

Interns:  There are definitely pros and cons to using interns. The danger of course is to recruit an intern who is facile with the technology and simply dump the social media stuff on them.  This is a bad idea.   Jeremiah Owyang has some good suggestions on how to integrate the intern into the team so they understand the strategic big picture.  Also the intern can help the strategy people understand the team.  If you go the intern route, Kivi Leroux Miller has some tips for giving social media projects to interns . And, if you want steal a great job description for an intern and recruitment method, check this post out from the ACLU of Northern California.

Free Work:  Seth Godin wrote a post a while back about the difference between using interns and "free workers" people who are unemployed or underemployed who want to build their resumes.

Empower Your Fans: You can grow your social media team without making a new hires.  Andy Sernovitz tells you how.

Paid Staff: Not many nonprofits have a full-time staff person doing their social media.  While I haven't seen any industry wide nonprofit studies, there is some data on social media staffing for Theatres and orchestras.  For those organizations in a position to talent scout for social media expertise, here's some good advice from David Armano and what should go in a job description. What I see mostly is nonprofits looking at a particular job description and figuring out how to incorporate social media responsibilities into a job that includes other responsibilities.    

What resources or tips do you have to getting the social media job in your nonprofit organization?

Comments

[Fiona McLaren]

Thanks for this post, there's some useful tips - as Amnesty UK's sole social media person and having gone through the process of writing and implementing strategy over the last year, we're just looking to broaden our horizons with the addition of a volunteer to help out with a lot of our 'listening' and blogger outreach.

I'm really hoping I can make this role fulfilling for them and hope to give them distinct projects they can really own - and hopefully do even better than we'd be able to. It'll definitely be interesting to see how 'finding the right person' goes, so perhaps I'll let you know once we've managed it!

[Kira Marchenese]

Beth, definitely some good thoughts. Here at EDF, we're also expanding our capacity by harnessing time and enthusiasm from all of our staff. As you know, we spend a ton of time doing internal training and coaching.

So while we only have me and Lauren dedicated not-quite-full-time to social media, we have a lot more voices than that representing EDF online. For example, take a look at all the EDF Twitterers: http://twitter.com/EnvDefenseFund/edfers You'll see a mix of personal accounts of EDF staffers and "institutional" accounts representing programs or projects.

[beth Rubin]

Wow! Thank you for these great post Beth. I have been trying to get my NGO's blog together and It has been a long, hard process. Your tips have been such a huge help. I will be implementing your new ideas here http://www.ikamva.org/blog/ in the near future.

[Shradhac]

Hi Beth! I attended the training on Monday and am so glad I did! Thank you for the super informative workshop. I look forward to keeping in touch and learning more from you.

Best,
Shradha

[Mars]

Glad I came across this site re employing the power of social media to power cultural change. Just so happens this morning I'll be meeting with the director of a public TV station with just such and idea.

[Melinda Lewis]

I love posts on your 'process', since you do so much successful work with adult learners. Thank you for sharing! Since I teach social work students, who are all required as part of their higher education to do at least 16 hours/week in one social service setting (usually a nonprofit, but sometimes government and sometimes social enterprise) for an entire year, I've been thinking about how students' work with these organizations could include social media efforts, given that they're considerably more invested (and supported, by their school) than many students. I'd love examples from nonprofits that have found sustainable models for this.

[Steve Waddell]

I particularly like the workshop slide 20 that shows SM Tactics and Tools...it actually resonates with development stages of networks that I wrote about in a recent blog...the relative importance of the tactics/tools seem to shift as a network develops. See the blog at www.blog.networkingaction.net/?p=281

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